How long have you been writing?
I started trying to write fiction when I was in grade school, had around 70 pages of something when I was in high school, have been writing technical papers in my field (physics) since late 1968, and finished my first novel This Shining Sea in the mid 1990s. It was published in 2000. I now have over 170 published scientific papers, including one in a law journal, and two dozen published books.
Which writers inspire you?
Who do I like to read? Chris Nuttall. David Weber. Barbara Hambly. L.E. Modesitt. Harry Turtledove. Martha Wells. Melissa Scott. Lisa Barnett, may she rest in peace. Patricia McKillip. Larry Correia. John Ringo. Jagi Lamplighter.
So, what have you written?
24 books, approximately 170 technical articles, including one in a law journal. For the technical articles, not quite a complete list, http://users.wpi.edu/~phillies/VITA.pdf. The books include 7 novels and a short story collection. The novels are listed at the end of the article. I’ve also written four political books, two being financial histories, a five-book series on boardgame design, a technical monograph on polymer solution dynamics, and two textbooks, most recently the freshman mechanics book Physics One, based on the equation Physics-Calculus=Nonsense.
What draws you to Superversive writing?
I sometimes write that rara avis, books in which economics and business play a major role, in which people succeed by dealing fairly with the people around them. Mistress of the Waves is my best example of that type. These are positive messages. In my MilSF novels, the center is on people protecting their neighbors and their country, not slaughtering and conquering everything in their path. Under modern conditions, I also view the stories I write as not having a political message, ebcause when politics gets into things that are not politics, it pollutes them. Instead, my books strive to be an island of quiet in which contemporary politics do not enter.
What are you working on at the minute?
For this year, progress is being made on four novels:
Stand Against the Light (Eclipse 3)
Of Breaking Waves (Eclipse 4)
Anglic Union Astrographic Service
The Merchant Adventurers
and perhaps on a review volume Phenomenology of Computer Simulations of Polymer Dynamics.
Do you read much and if so who are your favorite authors?
I read very little. I am too busy writing. However Who do I like to read? Chris Nuttall. David Weber. Barbara Hambly. L.E. Modesitt. Harry Turtledove. Martha Wells. Melissa Scott. Lisa Barnett, may she rest in peace. Patricia McKillip. Larry Correia. John Ringo. Jagi Lamplighter. Journal articles and books in my scientific research field.
How can readers discover more about you and you work?
My novels with list starting on the next page
Mistress of the Waves
Goddard is a world trapped in its non-technological present by brilliant social engineering. Readers will find it a bit like David Weber’s Safehold in its plot hook, but the suppression means and the counters are far less crude than high explosives. Also, the heroine does not have access to advanced technology. Her side is going to win by being better, not by having invincible weaponry.
Orphaned Amanda Kirasdotr rescues a space traveler, flies on his starship, and wants a starship of her own. That’s challenging when the hottest ship on Goddard boasts three masts and a full set of sails. But Amanda has a plan. First she must overcome storms, pirates, poverty and assassins of the mysterious Order of the Bell.
Mistress of the Waves is about overcoming economic and technological challenges. Yes, there are pirates, a revolution, and the mythical giant squid, but Amanda solves her challenges through hard work, thoughtful investment and planning, and clever responses to a massive fiscal bubble. Her answers are quite the opposite of ‘we have gunpowder, so let’s conquer the world’. Amanda has ‘we have trading ships. Let’s make the world a better place.’
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf rtf lrf pdb txt html
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/323812
Minutegirls
Massive space battles! Hand-to-hand combat! Politics! Hot babes with guns!
Minutegirls… Nice young women who just want some good clean fun with power armor, plenty of high explosives, and a few cute Minuteboys.
It’s 2174. From the hills of American Manchuria to the depths of Outer Space, America’s Girl Militia battles Franco-German treachery to shield the American Stellar Republic.
In American Manchuria, Chinese infiltrators seeking to restore the Chinese border of long ago face off against Minutegirl border guards. Rachel Goldsmith and her fellow volunteers of the Bella Abzug brigade must use American heroism, training, and ingenuity to fight the foreign invaders.
At Alpha Centauri, the 18 states of the American planets Lincoln and Markoff field their Planetary Self-Defense Fleet. Grand Commodore Pyotr Eustasovitch Kalinin must again and again lead his ships to victory against the outnumbered but technically superior fleets of the Federal European Union and their mysterious allies.
In Paris, Federal European Union High Admiral Bernard Rohan is tasked with ending the American challenge, on European terms, while at the same time satisfying the alien allies whose existence is a secret even from the European people.
The reclusive Professor Morbius and his close friends, they whose strategy a century ago saved the United States from foreign domination, are trusted by their fellow Americans to provide leadership. But what is the strategy when you cannot even name the enemy? Morbius’s intern Sandra Miller is a Mistress of the Sword, the Minutegirls’ elite of the elite, but it is her wits, not her combat skills, that must sustain her through a political maze and a seemingly hopeless romance.
Senator Alphonse Humbert Meyer, chair of the States of Lincoln Senate Committee on War, must persuade his fellow Senators to defend Lincoln effectively. He may be commander-in-chief of Lincoln’s military, but key decisions come from fellow Senators: Helene Duclos’s Constitutional Restoration Movement always disagrees. Thoughtful Elspeth Thorne’s Liberty Tree Party gives wise advice, but few votes. Senator Donna Caravelle’s Social Justice Party speaks up for other issues. The despised Thomas Fuller’s Democratic-Republican party calls for income taxes, conscription, government funding of scientific research, and other absurdities. Only Meyer’s Movimiento Moderate Central usually supports him.
Now available from Smashwords, Third Millennium, and Amazon
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf lrf pdb txt html
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745968
The One World
Amazon warriors against musketeer hordes!
The Holy Musketeers have found another continent to loot. The opposition? The primitive natives have no muskets and no cannon. Their cowardly men send their women to fight. The people of The One World face invaders with incomprehensible weapons and inscrutable objectives. Spears? Swords? City walls? Nothing stops the invaders from beyond. Between the Musketeers and the One World stands a single woman. Evaine is an amazon warrior and a wily strategist. Can even she defeat the Musketeers, or is civilization doomed?
Now available from Smashwords, Third Millennium, and Amazon
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf lrf pdb txt html
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/207869
Against Three Lands
Clan MacDonald is surrounded by enemies. Clan Gunn wants its lands. Mysterious pirates assail its shores. The All-Conquering Generalissimo suspects it of treason. Foreign trade is interrupted by barbarian invasions — or are they blue-skinned demons?
Angus Valentine Macdonald, seventh child of the One MacDonald, must travel to remote Mercia, where he must defeat the treachery of the Lunarian Empire, the corruption of the Langwadooran invaders, and the rapacious greed of the alien Trell to protect his homeland and win the hand of his lady-love.
Chris Nuttall writes: “I’ve known George Phillies online long enough to know that he is good at creating new and different universes. Mistress of the Waves features a world that is, in many ways, a work of art; a world governed by a system that subtly limits the technology available to its inhabitants in a manner that does not provoke resistance or outright rebellion. The One World features a female-dominated society that seems plausible; Minutegirls crafts a world shaped by high-technology and the long-term effects of a devastating war. In truth, George deserves to be known far better than he is.”
Authors’ aside: Against Three Lands is a tale of geographic alternative fiction, set on a world – The World of a Thousand Isles – broken into vast numbers of moderately large islands. Readers will recognize the extant technology as that found on earth in the early 17th century. There are gunpowder weapons, but they are not yet battle-winners on land. Unlike my novel The One World, you will search in vain for the magicians with their spark gap-coherer radios, and the accountants and their Babbage machines. The cultural settings of the Hundred Isles, Mercia, and their foreign visitors, are lifted from settings found on our world. I have quite deliberately interchanged lists of names, so, no, the Hundred Islers are not Scotsmen in disguise, and the Mercians and their Empire of the Stars are certainly not the Spanish Empire on which the sun never set.
Now available from Smashwords, Third Millennium, and Amazon
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf lrf pdb txt html
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/788412
Eclipse – The Girl Who Saved the World
Eclipse —
World’s Greatest Tween Superhero
World’s Most Terrifying Tween Supervillain
Opinions differ.
She’s caring, daring, deadly
…and out to save her world
whether they like it or not.
Meet Eclipse. She’s twelve. She’s hardworking, bright, self-reliant, good with tools, vigorously physically fit, tough as nails, still young enough to disguise herself as a boy. She’s also a persona: She flies, reads minds, and is not afraid of necessary violence. She had a bit of a problem with her mom. Her mom threw her out of the house. Then Mom blew up the house and disappeared. Now she’s procured the Holy Namestone, the Key to Paradise. And everyone in the world will be happy to kill her to get their hands on it.
Meet Trisha. She’s not quite a year older than Eclipse. She’s friendly, considerate, really good in school, athletic, does more than her share around the house. She’s also a persona. She has superspeed…an hour of housework in a minute. She flies, including from here to the next galaxy in an hour. She also has a bit of a problem with her parents. They always treat her with complete contempt, totally grounded her, and won’t say why.
Her brother and sister are personas, too. Year-younger sister Janie is a budding world chess and go champion. She also reads minds, sees distant events, and can kill with a glance. Her twin brother Brian is incredibly good with tools, builds fantastic models from scratch, has a nearly unbreakable force field, and summons plasma beams that cut battleships in half.
Now available from Smashwords, Third Millennium, and Amazon
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf lrf pdb txt html
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/914837
Airy Castles All Ablaze
The sequel to Eclipse – The Girl Who Saved The World
Eclipse —
World’s Greatest Tween Superhero
World’s Most Terrifying Tween Supervillain
Opinions differ.
She’s caring, daring, deadly
…and out to save our world
whether we like it or not.
Meet Eclipse.
She’s twelve. She’s hardworking, bright, self-reliant, good with tools, vigorously physically fit, tough as nails, still young enough to disguise herself as a boy. She’s a superhero: on her time line, they’re called personas. She flies, shrugs off bullets and artillery shells, and shatters fortifications with a glance. She had a bit of a problem with her mom. Her mom threw her out of the house. Then Mom blew up the house and disappeared.
Now Eclipse and her friends are on our Earth. They were sent here to beat the Two Dooms. If the Two Dooms win, we all die. Eclipse knows one certain fact. Whether she stops them or not, she probably gets to die trying.
Now available from Smashwords and Amazon
Available ebook formats: epub mobi pdf lrf pdb txt html
The Helicon Society 